Poetry

Ian le Tourneau: Murmuration

Ian le Tourneau

Murmuration: Starlings on the St John River Flashmob. Wingbeats. Murmuration. The starlings’ policy is beauty, written in fluid cursive across impending dusk. A love letter in blank verse from the folio. The sky is their amusement park, their rollercoaster, their tilt-a-whirl. Their flight, pliable like toffee: pulled apart, stretched to breaking, but melded back to a centre. A chainmail of feathers. Murmur: a recurring sound in the heart; softly spoken roar, as the Greeks put it. Murmuration: the sound our heart improvises now as it cartwheels. The birds soaring over the cobalt bolt of river. Like the sublime…